


Sunlight on the Garden

by azure_horizon



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: F/M, Morse/Thursday Friendship, Season 5 Spoilers, s5ep5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 04:05:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13872750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azure_horizon/pseuds/azure_horizon
Summary: The last of the summer was slowly draining away and he could feel the dark nights crawling back, the chill that settled earlier and earlier.  He was sure he was going to face the darkness alone.





	Sunlight on the Garden

**Sunlight on the Garden**

 

_The sunlight on the garden_

_Hardens and grows cold,_

_We cannot cage the minute_

_Within its nets of gold,_

_When all is told_

_We cannot beg for pardon._

 

The pint doesn’t settle well in his stomach, the action of drinking it automatic. His gut is clenched tight, rolling and roiling around and he can’t… He can’t quite think straight.

 

The station, work – his life, without Thursday? He can’t quite imagine it.

 

He watches Thursday – his mentor, his friend – as he leaves the pub, leaves Morse alone at the table with nothing but his words ringing around his head, tying knots in his body.

 

“ _You need to make the most of them while they’re here_.”

 

He’d learned from Thursday, not just about being a police man, a detective, but about how to be a man. Thursday had taken him under his wing in a way his father never had, appreciated Morse for who and what he was. He had reared him, pushed him on, fought back when Morse had tried to push everyone around him away.

 

He still wanted to learn from him, still wanted to know how to be better: a better detective, a better man. Those words of wisdom would come all too infrequently now – or next year, whenever he decided to hand in his papers – because although they might promise to keep in touch, it wouldn’t necessarily happen. He’d seen it happen all too often – coppers come, coppers go and once they are gone it’s hard to see them, hard to witness what becomes of once great men. Some handle it well, for a few years, until Death finds them. Others descend into a darkness that Morse can envision only too well for himself.

 

He can’t see the latter for Thursday. Mrs Thursday won’t let that happen.

 

But for Morse? He can’t see any other way, no other future. Strange had told him, in no uncertain terms, that he was too in love with feeling sorry for himself to ever truly love someone else and Morse thinks there’s some truth to that. He wonders if the malaise that had been plaguing the edges of his being had tinged what he’d had with Claudine. At the end, he could see her pulling away – hadn’t wanted to admit it. And on the punt, the photo she’d taken… Even he could see the sadness, the darkness that tinged his face.

 

“ _Take my advice, you ought to get back to that girl of yours.”_

He sighed (possibly more of a huff, though he’d never admit it) and swirled the last of his beer in the glass, staring at it as the dewy afternoon light leaked out of the sky. The last of the summer was slowly draining away and he could feel the dark nights crawling back, the chill that settled earlier and earlier.

 

_That girl of yours._

There was no girl. At least, not the one that Thursday was referring to.

 

He thought back to the night before, to Joan and the walk home and the unassuming comfort she had tried to offer him. The awkwardness had – finally – worn off between them but there still lingered a hint of something unexpressed that he couldn’t quite conquer between them. He’d felt it, felt the pull of it on that rooftop; when she’d been outlined in gold, Oxford spread out beneath her.

 

_“This is as close as I get.”_

 

And it was true, wasn’t it?

 

Too in love with being sorry for himself.

 

He downed the beer and rose, fixing his jacket in place before passing out into the crisp autumn air. The walk would clear his head, the car parked safely back at the station.

 

These streets were so familiar to him, each corner tinged with someone else’s sadness.

 

Perhaps if he’d taken the job in London, he’d be different. A fresh start. A clean slate. That’s what he promised Joan he’d do – and failed. Oxford, for all its faults, for all of its murders, was his home now. Thursday was right: Strange, Bright – even Trewlove – were all good people, people that he trusted, people that he cared for.

 

To the west, the sun was setting behind the bell tower of Magdalen College and he took the last warmth that it offered him, pausing in the street to feel the cool rays caress his cheek.

 

He knocked, just once and waited.

 

“Morse!”

 

He looked up at her, and paused, drinking in her features, the darkness of her hair against the paleness of her skin and the blue of her eyes, at the uncertain surprise displayed there.

 

“I’ll have that coffee now, if… if you don’t mind.”

 

“Of course,” she said with a smile and moved aside, “come in.”

 

When the door closed, blocking out the gold and enclosing them in semi-darkness, Morse found he didn’t mind it. She leaned back against the door, a smile stirring at the edge of her lips.

 

“I never cared much for coffee.”

 

And then he kissed her, there in the opaque darkness of her stairwell, and something inside of him lit up.

 

 _And not expecting pardon,_  
Hardened in heart anew,   
But glad to have sat under   
Thunder and rain with you,   
And grateful too   
For sunlight on the garden.


End file.
